New music from Elvis Perkins :: “Shampoo”

I’ve been drawn steadily to Elvis Perkins‘ 2007 folk chronicle of excoriating grief and loss in recent months, and find myself turned on anew to its perfection. Ash Wednesday is a brilliant, brilliant album that defies easy classifications as it traces the dark rivers in Perkins’ life through losing his mother on one of the 9/11 planes, and his father (Anthony Perkins) to AIDS. Songs like the title track and “While You Were Sleeping” contain some of the most beautifully sad lyrics about those gray days that I’ve ever known:

“while you were sleeping
the babies grew
the stars shined and the shadows moved
time flew, the phone rang
there was a silence when the kitchen sang”

(read them all, listen here)

This week saw the release of three new streaming songs to his website, from the forthcoming Elvis Perkins In Dearland album (XL Recordings, March 10th). I spent several hours at work clicking and re-clicking, listening dozens of times to three very different songs. I’m excited where the collaboration with his touring Dearland band is taking their authentic, penetrating music. Perkins blends an appreciation of the old, old traditions in his modern folk music. I hear a loose thread of Nina Simone’s traditional classic when he sings, “Yellow is the color of my true love’s crossbones, yellow is the color of the sun; black is the color of a strangled rainbow…”

Shampoo – Elvis Perkins In Dearland
(related note: still curious about this Shampoo….)

NEW! ELVIS PERKINS IN DEARLAND TOUR DATES
March 09 – Seattle WA, Tractor Tavern
March 11 – San Francisco CA, Cafe Du Nord
March 12 – Los Angeles CA, Troubadour
March 25 – New York NY, Bowery Ballroom

Oh, and this is still one of my favorite Blogotheque videos:

#66.2 – ELVIS PERKINS – Emile’s Vietnam in the Sky & All The Night Without Love